Building data warehouse from scratch.. Need some advice.

[winny]

Hi Folks,
Currently my job is to build a data warehouse. Business is using crystal reports to generate reports from the production database(ODS). Now we want to build a data warehouse and use OBIEE OR COGNOS to generate the reports from the data warehouse. so that only real time operations are done on ODS side and reporting from he data ware house


At present I have analyzed the crystal reports and came to know that there are 150 tables in ODS that are currently being used to generate the reports. The reports are monthly, quarterly, daily and as needed. I have documented all the tables and data elements that are being used for the reports.

Now my QUESTIONS IS WHAT SHOULD BE MY NEXT STEPS OR FUTURE STEPS , HOW SHOULD I GO FORWARD.. SO I BUILD A SUCCESSFUL DATA WAREHOUSE. I AM NEW TO DATA MODELING

[BoxesAndLines]

As much as I would like to help you out, any information I can provide via a web forum is woefully inadequate for the journey you are about to embark upon. You need to read, at a minimum, two books to cover the knowledge required to build data warehouses. Kimball's ETL Toolkit and Dimensional Modeling book provide enough background to answer your questions. Alternatively, you could recognize that you are in over your head, no disrepect intended, and hire another experienced employee or contractor to help in the architecture, design, and build out.

As a first pointer, simply replicating existing reporting isn't a good way to design your dimensional tables. Instead focus on the business processes and attempt to understand the type of information required to make the your customer's job easier.